Fate Adds Some Injury To Missouri`s Insult

December 07, 1990|By Skip Myslenski.

A day of infamy: Ol` Murph, that legendary barkeep who authored the theory about everything going wrong that can go wrong, was nothing but a blithering optimist. At least that`s what the folks in Dublin say over their pints of Guinness, and after suffering through last Nov. 8, you won`t find many down in Columbia, Mo., who will disagree with that.

That day, a dark day at the University of Missouri, found basketball coach Norm Stewart and school President Haskell Monroe tied down at a press conference and responding to the news the NCAA had just slapped Stewart`s program with two years` probation. It was the first time the school had felt the wrath of sanctions, which made the moment bad enough, yet as they were answering questions about them, even stranger doings were occurring elsewhere on campus.

They were occurring at an ROTC class that included Tiger frosh Melvin Booker, Jevon Crudup, Lamont Frazier and Reggie Smith. They, along with their classmates, were learning how to cross a creek by sliding on a rope, and first up for this exercise was point guard Booker. He hooked onto the rope. Crudup and Frazier, behind him, pulled it taut. Booker started off. But, with him on the front end of his journey, the 3,000-pound test line from which he hung suddenly snapped.

Booker fell only four feet and onto land, but the rope whiplashed back, smacked him in the mouth and knocked out three of his teeth. Crudup and Frazier, now pulling on a slack line, fell in a heap, and when they arose, Crudup had a sprained wrist and Frazier had a slight concussion after hitting his head on a rock. Frazier, however, was still aware enough to go searching in the mud for Booker`s teeth, which he found and returned. Booker then went off to the dentist, where he underwent 4 1/2 hours of oral surgery to get his mouth put back together.

Crudup, now a starter for the Tigers, did not miss a day of practice. Frazier, another starter, missed a few. But Booker, who will start at point Saturday when the Tigers play host to No. 3 Arkansas, did not practice again until Nov. 26, the day before Missouri`s season opener at Rutgers.

And what of Smith, another guard and the fourth freshman in that ROTC class? He escaped it unscathed, but at practice the afternoon of that strange day, he did not escape Stewart`s attention. There, and despite all he had just endured, the coach took note of Smith`s pristine condition and then proved he had not lost his dry sense of humor.

He proved that by looking at Smith and saying: ``Hey, Reggie. Did you want his job so bad that you cut halfway through the rope before Melvin got there?``

- No fat jokes, please: The powerful Razorbacks, one of the nation`s best, are led by multitalented guards Todd Day and Lee Mayberry. Yet, nearly as essential to their success is Oliver Miller, their junior center who is listed in the program as 275 but checks in on the scales at closer to 295.

That is what he weighed last March, when Arkansas appeared in the Final Four, and there in Denver he featured a bit of a belly and a physique modeled after that of former heavyweight chump James ``Buffet`` Douglas. But during the summer, Miller played and practiced daily with a team down in South America and then underwent a weight-training program in the fall that redistributed his bulk.

He was already nimble and quick for a fridge his size, and that has made him only quicker and more nimble. He proved that recently against Kansas State when, in one sequence, he blocked a shot, grabbed the ball, made the outlet pass, hustled downcourt for a possible rebound and then hustled back to block another shot on K-State`s next possession.

- Learning at daddy`s knee: When Michigan drops in at Duke on Saturday, one of the waiting Blue Devils will be precocious frosh Grant Hill. Grand expectations have surrounded him ever since he signed on there, but he has handled them with aplomb and without a trace of insecurity.

There is a story behind that, and it has to do with his mother, a successful attorney, and his father, Yale grad and former NFL running back Calvin. ``My father,`` relates Grant Hill, ``was the kind of person who kinda believed his own press. If the press said he was playing well, he was elated. If they said he was not playing well, he got down. My mom and I talked about that a lot, and all through high school, she stressed to not let the press, or the pressure, bother me. So while I want to try to live up to those expectations, all I can do is play hard.``

- But in this case, father does know best: At a team meeting before Indiana flew out to Hawaii for the Maui Classic, a player raised his hand with a question. ``Can we wear shorts out there?`` wondered freshman guard Pat Knight.

His coach, and father, answered in amazement, and after reiterating a ban on such casual clothing, wondered: ``How long have you been around this program anyway?``

``Well,`` said Pat Knight. ``I thought maybe you had changed with the times.``